It's not even a little bit irrelevant (and it's the same point I made in the original couplet).

Given the topic -- there were centuries where we had no access to early foglio texts of Shakespere; just later changed versions that were multiply inferior.

My core point is that you can do -anything- to a text and it's fine (not necessarily good, but fine). Anything, that is, except for preventing others from accessing the early text, thus making your work replace, rather tan just compete with the original text.

On one level, the distress over the OSF adaptation wasn't over whether the original would disappear. So to say it won't trivializes the concern, which might be a reasonable dismissal were it not preceded by a long argument about the prevalence of Shakespeare adaptations, some of which are just as bad as this, and some of which are not adaptations of this kind at all, but editing and performance interpretation which is inherent in the act of producing any play. To lump them together is already evasive of the problem; to say "Those didn't make the original text disappear, this won't either" is far more so.

On a second level, there is a phenomenon I call "media colonization" in which, even though the book is still on the shelf to be read, people don't. They take their image of the story from the movie, and are oblivious to its differences from the book. Two historical examples from the SF/F world: Frankenstein, a book so utterly different from its famous movie that I've never encountered anyone reading the book for the first time who isn't completely startled; and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a book so drowned out by its movie that people have even forgotten its proper title.

The same thing is happening to The Lord of the Rings. Even in Tolkien scholarship, I'm constantly having to fend off articles supposedly about the books in which Aragorn is reluctant to be king, Sauron is a helpless giant eyeball, or hobbits have a regular meal called Second Breakfast. None of which is true in the books.

Whether an adapted Shakespeare would take over from the original, I don't know: probably not. But failing to remove the original text from availability is not sufficient to ensure that it will not.

This assumes I'm trying to write a direct response to the original complaint. I'm not. I'm writing a sonnet, which must stand on its own. "Your sonnet is making its own statement rather than restricting itself to being a counter-argument" is entirely irrelevant.

The last part seems to indicate you don't agree. That's fair. Write your own sonnet. Jo's sonnet is a solid response to your argument, though; as much as colonization can be an issue in the short term, the superior work tends to win in the end; what stands the test of time is what matters, not a momentary inconvenience.

Now, the third quatrain is still weak; I'll need to rewrite that. Haven't decided to replace my couplet; you got confused by the original one, but I do like the rhyme in the original, so I need to think on it. (edit: done; much happier with it).

"I'm writing a sonnet" is a null statement. What is the intellectual content of the sonnet? If we're not supposed to have thoughts about your view of the discussion, why preface the sonnet with a statement that it's expressing your views of it?

If you're not trying to write a direct response to the original complaint, whether it's a sonnet or not, you really need to work on your discourse, because it sure reads as if you are.

Lastly, I'm not complaining that your sonnet is making its own statement. I'm observing that the sonnet is saying one thing until the end, when it reverses its opinion or drops the topic in the middle.

Speaking with my (somewhat dusty) library hat, I don't see a conflict between the last line and the rest of the sonnet. For example, an edition that used Shakespeare's original spelling would baffle most readers, but we need to keep it available as a check on the faithfulness any updates.